Do you ever find yourself with a full weekend of errands to run but you’re aching to get outside the city and go away for bit? This happens to us often as, like most others, the week is busy and we get stuck doing errands and tasks around the house over Saturday and Sunday. Enter: the mini adventure.

A friend of ours first invited us out on what he calls “12 hour adventures” sometime last summer. He leaves the house in the evening, hikes up a peak, camps out and heads home before his kids are awake! We have no kids to draw us back home off a mountain top, but we do have friends to visit and work to do, so Mikey and I started doing mini adventures on our own in the summers.

Yesterday, after a relaxing day around the house, we packed our bags and headed west, Banff-bound and ready to summit Cascade Mountain. We made it mostly up in about 2 hours, 15 min, finishing our hike under night skies with our headlamps on. While there, I shot a vlog for a special giveaway (see below!) and also one to explain why only Mikey summited the next morning and not me… Read on to find out what happened to me on the trail and “view on” to discover how to enter the giveaway at the bottom!

Much of the trail on the way up Cascade Mountain was washed away by the flood in June.

…as you can see, the bridge was also washed out. This is where things got interesting, and I’ll let the vlog below explain the rest:

So that’s the rest of the story (as to why I can’t do any workouts this week!). Disappointing, but I did go to the Emerg in Canmore on our way home to get it checked out and I have no ligament or tissue damage – just a hemorrhage where I hit it when I fell crossing the stream. It’s so bad (bruising more and still very swollen) because it occurred right on my bone bump from my Osgood–Schlatter disease or syndrome. It’s an irritation of the patellar ligament at the tibial tuberosity (thanks, Wikipedia!) and is essentially bone that sticks up below my knee cap, making kneeling or excessive pounding difficult because the tendon from my quad gets inflamed easily as it has to stretch over the bone bump. THAT’S why this injury is pretty painful today…but thankfully all I need to do is rest and ice – but it’s going to be rough for me to limit movement with clients and also not do my own for at least a week!

So…after hearing about our exciting mini adventure, are you ready for a GIVEAWAY?!

And what delicious bar are you in the running to receive?!

The great folks at The Simply Bar released the new Maple Pecan flavor on Canada Day (July 1st) earlier this month. I had a chance to try it and absolutely love it; but the real test is Mikey, and it was a winner for him as well! Again, I love the stats on these bars and the company themselves – check them out on their website for more info.

Leave a comment on the video on my YouTube channel OR on this blog post answering this question: Where would you take your Simply Bar? Giveaway will run for 1 week and the winner will be announced next Monday!

Make it a great week, friends. Stay fit for a fuller life – in the gym and kitchen and on the mountains and I’ll catch up with you later! Live well & be well,

At this time of year, I would take simply bars on paddling trips – canoeing or kayaking! On the off chance that I were to win and the bars were too arrive next week (doubtful :p) I would take them on a 3 week canoe trip on the Attawapiskat River in northern ON. More likely they would be saved for some fall paddling, and winter skiing, backcountry adventures.

Beautiful! Cascade Mountain is one of my favs! I winced when I heard about your injury – As you know, I too have the dreaded osgood-schlatter disease and know how PAINFUL #@%%## it can be when you whack it. Take it easy! If I had a Simply Bar, I would be taking it to dog shows like the AKC Summer Classic Dog Show coming up where I have to run like mad around the ring to show off my boy Gabe to the judges! You need quick energy to do that!

Forgot to answer the ??? I would take my bar on a long run through the beautiful island of TRINIDAD! And I ould share it with my blog friend Christina – The Athletarian. (she’s coming from Canada to visit me in a month!)

I know I’m your mom….but I want a Canadian Simply Bar in Maple Pecan! Why?….well because I live in California where everything is fake (well, at least in Southern California) and I want the true, pure, simple ingrediants of a Simply Bar! Where would I take it? To the west side of the Golden Gate Bridge, the Marin Headlands on the famous Dip Sea Trail Run! I would munch on my bar in and out of fog, redwood trees and the brown grassy hills that turn into steep cliffs that fall off into the blue, churning Pacific Ocean below! Oh wow….one of those bars, sitting on a cliff with a thermos of coffee…what could be better?

Think I’ll win?
By the way…so sorry about your leg! If it’s any consolation…you have to be the cutest injured person I have ever seen!

after living in Calgary for almost two years now, i’m finally starting to really explore the amazing hiking areas around here. next adventure is the hoodoos this weekend. going to go climb one of those suckers!